Has anyone a hint about how to use the Jumpringer without breaking
those horribly expensive blades? I have the blade holder tightened &
aligned correctly, as far as I can tell. I have tried putting a
small piece of wood dowel at the end to hold the coil in place.
Sometimes, everything works just fine, then the next time I try to
cut a coil (especially very small rings) the blade chips. I’m also
having difficulty sometimes with the cut coil not staying “upright,”
so some rings get nicked.
I’m sure these issues have all been responded to before, but I
couldn’t find answers in the archives.
Bev L
Renaissance Jewelry
www.wirewrapjeweler.com
Bev,
Your problem is can be resolved by inserting the largest size wooden
dowel that will fit inside your coil for its full length. Your coil
is collapsing inside the holder and allowing it to shift while the
blade is spinning. This twists the blade causing it to crack and/or
lose teeth. In order to prevent this from happening, you want the
coil to remain rigid and stationary. by collapsing the full length of
the coil against a dowel, you will easily accomplish this. Pick up
dowels in as many appropriate sizes as are available and use the
largest size that will fit inside you coil. Don’t be concerned if
it’s a loose fit. You won’t distort the rings by collapsing the coil
onto the dowel. The smallest diameter dowel I’ve seen is 1/8". For a
smaller size, bamboo skewers (sold in supermarkets) are great!
Ray Grossman
We usually wrap the coils with scotch tape before cutting them. Try
using Bur Life on the blade as well. My Koil Kutter is my most
borrowed tool in the shared studio.
Rick Hamilton
Hi Bev,
Based on your description, I suggest looking at how tightly you are
screwing down the plate on the coil holder. If you over tighten the
cap screws, the plate might bow slightly. A bowed plate allows the
coil to move around and a moving coil is the enemy of thin blades and
clean cuts. Over the years, I’ve lost both coils and blades to this
problem when I’ve stopped paying attention. This problem also exists
on the Koil Kutter and in fact you have to be even more careful
because the top plate on the KK is aluminum and more easily bowed.
As far as I can tell, the proper amount to tighten the screws is
until the plate just comes down on top of the coil and then the
tiniest bit more…maybe an eighth of a turn.
If bowing isn’t the problem, the only other things I can think of
are:
-Make sure you let the blade spin up to max. speed before starting
to cut, and then use a slow feed into the coil. If you really jam the
blade into the coil at the start, it can catch, bend, and chip…or
shatter!
-For small coils (say 2.5mm ID or less), be sure to flip over the
top plate on the coil holder. This reduces the depth of cut and seems
to work better. It also prevents you from nicking the bottom of the
ring.
-If you are having to use a lot of forward force to get the blade to
cut, the blade is dull and should be replaced. Expensive as they
are, I tend to err on the side of throwing them away because a dull
blade is dangerous and makes an ugly burr on the rings. You can tell
if the blade is dull by checking the cuts with a loupe. Rings cut
with a sharp blade will have a clean, perfectly square cut face with
no burr.
Hopefully Ray Grossman is reading Orchid today and can chime in on
this if I’ve got any of this wrong.
Best of luck with your jump rings!
Regards,
Tom Colson
Renaissance Gecko Designs
Based on your description, I suggest looking at how tightly you
are screwing down the plate on the coil holder. If you over tighten
the cap screws, the plate might bow slightly. A bowed plate allows
the coil to move around and a moving coil is the enemy of thin
blades and clean cuts.
That’s it! I’ll almost bet it’s because I tighten down too much,
because I tighten as much as possible, thinking that that would keep
the coils from slipping. The other hints about blade speed and the
dull blade are good too. Maybe one day I’ll have a lade long enought
o se what it looks like dull.
I can hardly wait now for my new blades, so I can try again.
Thank you
Bev Ludlow
I'll try this, maybe even toothpicks for the tiniest rings?
Hi I thought I’d chirp in via email, I almost always use toothpicks,
unless I’m making some bigger rings that I can actually fit dowels
through, but I make a lot of verrrrrrrrrrry tiny rings–in fact,
alotta my tinier than tiny rings I can only fit halves or even
slivers of toothpicks in!! Sounds crazy, but even slivers of
toothpicks are definately better than using nothing at all–when I
did that I always ended up sawing right thru so the teeny coils were
cut in half, which would leave me with a pile of scrap instead of
rings 
Ann-Marie Keene
www.creativespill.com